Unbreakable (3 page)

“No one’s laughing.” Sophie stared nonchalantly back at her, her arms crossed over her chest.

“You don’t seem to grasp the seriousness of the situation, Sophie. You narrowly missed having all of this on a criminal record. Think how that would affect your future, how it would affect your job prospects. All for jeans, perfume, shoes and some boy who’s far too old to be spending time with you.”

“Mark’s only twenty-four. Besides, he’s nothing to do with me. He’s Abby’s boyfriend.”

“You were in a car he stole!”

“I didn’t know!” Sophie glared at her mom.

“Jess, to be fair she didn’t know about the car.”

“Don’t defend her, James!”

“I’m not defending what she did but I’m not going to condemn her for something she didn’t know about.” Sophie’s dad glanced at her mom before looking back at Sophie and speaking calmly. “He supplied you with alcohol. Who knows what could have happened to you on a beach, under the influence of alcohol with a practical stranger? If that’s how Abby wants to behave then there’s nothing I can do about it. But it’s not how you were raised and as your parents we’re going to stop this behavior before it gets any further.”

Sophie eyed both her parents suspiciously. Two and a half months had passed since the shoplifting, and relations between Sophie and her parents had deteriorated to barely on speaking terms. By the end of the month her community service hours would be complete. Looking at them squarely, she shrugged defiantly. “So what do I have to look forward to now? Being grounded?”

Sophie’s mom stared back at her. “No. A trip over Christmas.”

“A holiday? What, time for some family bonding?”

“In a sense.” Her dad clasped his hands together and rested them on the table. “We’ve arranged for you to spend the Christmas holidays with Aunt Kay and Uncle Philip.”

“They live in the middle of nowhere!” Sophie protested.

“Texas isn’t nowhere,” her dad replied evenly.

“Their ranch is! What the hell am I supposed to do on a ranch?”

“Watch your language, Sophie.”

“Don’t tell me to watch my language! This is bullshit!” Sophie pushed back from the table and started to stand up. As she did so, James sighed and spoke quietly to his daughter.

“Sophie, please sit down. We need to discuss this as a family.”

“That’s rich! You didn’t bother trying to discuss this with me before you and Mom decided to just ship me off without asking me what I wanted.”

“We’re discussing it now. We’re trying to help you, Soph, not punish you.”

“Yeah, right. I’m just one more problem you don’t want to deal with.”

“Sophie, that’s not true. Please sit down.” Jessica reached out to take Sophie’s hands where they rested on the table as she leaned on it, but Sophie pulled them back as she stood straighter.

“If it’s not true then why aren’t you and Dad coming with me?”

Jessica and James glanced at each other before looking back at Sophie. Her dad cleared his throat. “Your mom is going to spend some time with Aunt Sarah. She’s going to need help with the twins since Uncle Bill will be away on business over Christmas.”

“Well why doesn’t she come here?” Sophie asked.

“It’s a lot of work traveling with two babies. It’s much easier if your mom goes to her.”

“So why aren’t you going? You said she needed the help, surely you can help.”

“I want to give your mom and your aunt time to catch up.”

“So what are you going to do over the holidays?”

“I’ll stay here.”

“You’ll stay here?” Sophie eyed her dad and he shrugged.

“Yes, I’ll stay here.”

A few moments of silence passed as Sophie glanced from her mom to her dad, before she suddenly started laughing.

“What’s funny?” The note of irritation was hard to miss in Jessica’s voice.

“You guys. Both of you are just hilarious.” Sophie’s laugh faded and her tone became suddenly bitter. “Do you really think I’m buying this crap? You guys can’t stand each other. You argue all the time and you don’t know how to deal with each other so you’re just bailing. Same thing with me. You see me as a problem you don’t know how to solve so you’re just dumping me somewhere far away to be somebody else’s problem. You think I’m treating things like a joke but this whole situation is a joke!” Her voice had become increasingly louder and the last words were shouted at her parents.

“Sophie, don’t shout. It’s not helping –”

“No, James. She’s right.” Her dad’s words were cut off by her mom, who stared at Sophie with a calm bitterness that echoed Sophie’s own. “Let’s just state things as they are. Your father and I aren’t getting along. We haven’t been getting along for months. For your part, you’re like a stranger to us. You’re our daughter but you’re not you. You always got good grades, Sophie, and now you’re failing. How many phone calls have we received from your school office informing us you’ve skipped classes? Where do you go? Are you shoplifting? Are you getting high? Are you drinking? You refuse to answer our questions and you hardly talk to us at all nowadays unless it’s to scream at us. This can’t go on.” Jessica narrowed her eyes resolutely. “It won’t go on, Sophie. Your father and I are not going to stand by and see you ruin your last few months of high school. You need to think about your future but if you can’t do that right now, then we’ll do it for you.”

“I want to stay here. I’ll stay out your way,” Sophie directed her words at her dad. “You won’t have to see me at all.”

“That’s the problem, Soph,” James sighed. “We never see you. We don’t know where you go. We don’t know how many times you’ve lied to us when you said you were spending the night at Abby’s house and instead went off who knows where. We’re worried about you, Soph. You’re young. I know when you’re eighteen you don’t think you’re young. You think you’re all grown up, but you’re not. You think you know so much about the world and you can handle yourself but I can tell you from experience that it’s a really big world out there, Soph, with a lot of different people. Sometimes the people and situations you experience are great but at other times they’re not, and the way you’ve been carrying on the past few months has your mom and I increasingly worried that you’re going to run into a situation or person or people that you can’t deal with yourself. We’re not trying to scare you; we’re trying to open your eyes and let you see how we view things because the truth is that we’re scared something will happen to you and we would never forgive ourselves if it did.”

James paused as he assessed Sophie’s reaction to his words, but she said nothing so he continued. “The thing is, Soph, we don’t have all the answers all the time. Your mom and I have made mistakes with each other and with you but it’s hard to fix things because we can’t see the situation clearly. We need to step back and take some time to think. One thing that your mom and I both agree on is that a change of situation will be good for all of us. With your mom at her sister’s and me here we’ll have our own time to just think and focus on ourselves for a bit. Then we can start to think about our relationship when we’re feeling more relaxed. When it comes to you, we both feel it would benefit you to spend some time apart from us. We didn’t want our problems to affect you, Soph, but they have and we’re so sorry for that. However, you don’t need a break just from us. You need a break from this situation you’re in. Skipping classes to hang out with your friends, the alcohol, getting high…your mom’s right. This isn’t you.”

“Okay, so I skipped some classes. I can make up the work. It’s no big deal. The weed wasn’t mine. A friend stored it in my jacket pocket without telling me. I didn’t know it was there. And the alcohol was Mark’s. I didn’t ask him to buy it.” Sophie didn’t feel guilty at lying because most of what she’d just said was true. So what if the weed was hers? It wasn’t like she got stoned every day.

“Maybe you didn’t ask him to buy it, but that didn’t stop you from drinking it. If the police hadn’t found you, you would have concealed the fact that you got drunk with a practical stranger at night on an otherwise deserted beach apart from the three of you. Maybe the weed wasn’t yours but the fact is you were still in a situation involving weed. Alternatively it was yours and you’ve just been careful not to come home high. Maybe you’ve been drinking on numerous occasions but made sure there was no sign of it when you got home. We just don’t know, Soph, and that’s why we want you to get a break from this situation. Get a break from the influence of your friends.”

“Dad, it’s not like you have to worry about that. Abby isn’t speaking to me and I’m not speaking to her.”

“Sure, Abby may be your closest friend – or was, but the chances are you’ll both patch things up eventually – but that doesn’t mean you’re not drinking and/or getting high with your other friends or mixing with unsuitable guys who are only after one thing.”

Sophie scowled. “We really don’t need to be having this conversation. Mom’s done ‘the talk’.”

Her dad shrugged. “Maybe we do. I know what goes through the heads of young males, particularly twenty-something males spending time with high school girls. I don’t like the idea of you spending time with them.”

“Geez, Mark is Sophie’s boyfriend. I don’t even like the guy,” Sophie huffed in exasperation.

“Doesn’t matter, you’ve already experienced a potentially dangerous situation courtesy of him. The fact that he involved you and Abby in a theft situation proves to me that he doesn’t give a damn about either of you. Maybe he can sweet-talk Abby and give her some sob story about how he was going to sell the car because he needed the money for a sick relative but I can guarantee you that her parents will be making every effort to break off all communication between her and Mark. She wants to visit him in prison, did you know that?”

“No. Like I said, we don’t talk anymore.” Sophie stared beseechingly at her dad. “Just give me a chance.”

“You’ve had months of chances, sweetheart. Things are just getting worse. Besides, it’s only going to be two weeks. It’ll be over before you know it.”

“Easy for you to say. You won’t be stuck with nothing to do all day.”

“You’ll have plenty to do, Sophie. You’ll need to help Aunt Kay and Uncle Philip on the ranch.”

“Are you serious? What makes you think I’m going to do any work on a ranch? I’m not exactly experienced.”

“Everybody does something, Sophie. You won’t be doing anything you don’t know how to do. You’re just pulling your weight, like everybody else. Running a ranch is hard work. Everybody needs to work together to keep things running smoothly.”

“This is so unfair!” Sophie yelled. “It’s not my ranch! I didn’t ask to go there; you’ve just decided to send me!”

“Enough, Sophie!” Jessica’s patience had finally worn out completely. “You’re going and that’s final!” Mother and daughter stared angrily at each other for a few seconds before Sophie turned around and stormed out of the kitchen.

“Where are you going?” Jessica called out to the retreating figure of her daughter.

“I’m going to my damn room, unless that’s banned too!” Sophie didn’t turn around as she spat the words out before disappearing from the kitchen. A few moments later her footsteps were heard stomping up the stairs, followed by the angry slam of a door.

The seconds drifted on before James uttered “Well that went well.”

“Don’t start, James.” Jessica stood up. “I’m going for a drive. I need to clear my head.”

James watched as his wife walked across the kitchen to retrieve the car keys off the counter. As she neared the door James called out to her. “Jess, she’ll get over it. She’s upset now but some time away from her life here is going to be good for her.”

Jessica paused and turned to face him. “I know that, James. But she doesn’t. The question is how long she’s going to hate us for this decision…and how long it’s going to take her to forgive us for screwing up.” Jessica turned around again and walked out the kitchen, leaving James alone.

“Your aunt and uncle are looking forward to seeing you.” James smiled at his daughter as they stood near the security control area.

“Really? Well I’m sure they’ll tire of the delinquent soon enough.”

“Sophie, please…”

“What? Seriously, the last time they saw me was three years ago when they came to stay for the weekend. They don’t even know me.”

“Well you’ll have plenty of opportunity to get reacquainted. You all got along great together when they were here. They also remember the girl who was so excited to be visiting their ranch that the first thing she asked when she arrived was whether she could go on a horse.”

“That was five years ago. I was a kid. Besides, once I saw how big they were, I refused.”

“You still are a kid. Whether you want to admit it or not you’ll always be my and your mother’s kid, even when you’re an adult. That’s just how parents think.”

“You know this seriously sucks, right? You are grasping that concept in at least some small way?”

“Sophie, I know you don’t want to hear this but we’re trying to protect you. Right now our family isn’t in the best place and we’re trying to do what’s right for all of us.”

“We’re not a family. In my mind we’re just people related by blood living under the same roof.” At the look of hurt in James’ eyes, guilt started to bubble up inside but she smothered it before it could develop any further. “I need to go. Guess I’ll see you in two weeks.”